


Legacy

by siberianchan



Category: The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
Genre: Gen, I like killing off asshole characters, The death warning is mainly because..., and MAN was Neoptolemus an asshole, basically he dies and gets a well-deserved dressing-down by daddy dearest, musings about fame and legacy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-25 17:19:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15645369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/siberianchan/pseuds/siberianchan
Summary: What's left of us in the end?





	Legacy

**Author's Note:**

> Title: Legacy
> 
> Fandom: The Song of Achilles
> 
> Author: Siberianchan
> 
> Disclaimer: While the characters in general belong into the public domain, these interpretations of them and the events surrounding them belong to Madeline Miller whom I seriously need to talk to about how you can't go around breaking people's hearts with your writing like that. Seriously.)
> 
> Comment: Something a little older for a change, but still very enjoyable. (... depending on how enjoyable you find it to kill off canon assholes, of course).

When he finally dies, it is almost disappointing.

Neoptolemos, Pyrrhus, Son of Achilles, _Aristos Achaios_ is killed by a spear, from behind, by a mere mortal man and, most infuriatingly of all, killed over a woman.

Orest should have let him have Hermione; after all she was promised to him, a bride in exchange for his spear arm in war.

Hermione, daughter of Helen, as beautiful as her mother and the key to the throne of Sparta. Hermione, the best of the best that mortal mankind could offer.

Just good enough for the son of Achilles, Neoptolemos who kept himself a princess as bed slave.

He told himself that he would never make the same mistakes as his father, settling – on the basest of whims in his youth – for something minor, inferior, ordinary. He would never have his name besmirched like that.1

Your fame is how you are remembered.

Your memory is whom and what you are associated with.

Achilles, for as long as Pyrrhus could remember, was associated with Phthia. With strength. With power. With greatness in each and every aspect.

And with a name that Thetis, his divine grandmother, would only ever snarl, spit and then leave there like a stain too filthy even to touch it for removal.

 _Patroclus_ _._

Mediocre, ugly, mortal, inferior, dirty, not deserving any glance Achilles would have for him.

 _The reason he won_ _‘_ _t ever look at you. The reason he will never spare a single thought for his son_ , Thetis whispered, her breath cold and salty against his cheek when she fed him Ambrosia and quenched his thirst with Nectar.

Pyrrhus has always hated him.

He has hated Achilles for besmirching his fame with this man _._

 _Aristos Achaion_ deserved the best.

So Pyrrhus gave to him the, sacrificing a young princess, priestess of Athena, a part of his own war prize, all the while weaving a tale of how Achilles had seen her as she had come with her father to beg for a corpse. How he had demanded her company in the underworld.

He wove a tale even of his bed slave, the beautiful woman who had escaped him with the help of his own spear. She had been Achilles' lover. She had to be. She had been his lover and taking her away had hurt him so deeply that he had refused to fight.

This is good.

Everything is good, as long as the ugly name would be forgotten and if he had to kill every single man daring to utter it or speak of its connection to Achilles – then be it so.

His father had been _Aristos Achaion._ He deserves an unblemished, untarnished memory. He deserves the best.

He deserves a worthy son, a son he would approve of, a son to surpass him.

Pyrrhus has done it. He has brought Troy to fall, making sure it will never rise again.

He has proven himself worthy of his title of _Aristos Achaios_.

He has found women suited for him, a princess, a would-have-been queen as his slave and a future queen as his bride. He even ~~had~~ fought for the right to have this woman.

He has done everything right.

So why is he now lying here, a spear in his chest, feeling his life slowly slipping away, as it gets soaked up by the sands of Delphi, too dizzy at this point to even feel pain?

Why is the woman holding Orest in her arms?

Why is nobody with him? He is supposed to be mourned, he is supposed to be honoured. He is _Aristos Achaios._

He doesn't deserve this.

 

Orest, after being cleansed of the crime of killing on the sacred temple grounds of Delphi, is honourable enough to hold a proper burial for him, a grand one even, with sacrifices and burial games, and he himself lights the pyre and speaks the prayers in a solemn, honest voice.

And his ashes are gathered by Hermione and Andromache – now free, and soon-to-be married and queen again – both tight-lipped and eyes filled with disgust, Hermione‘s wrists and neck still showing the marks where he held her down and Andromache‘s belly swollen and heavy.

He will live on. From his blood kings will be born.

Who cares that Andromache looks as if she would just love to shatter his ashes in the wind?

Who cares that Hermione spits into the urn when she thinks nobody is looking?

He has done well.

Surely, he thinks as he watches his tombstone being erected, surely his father will be proud of him.

 

The Cerberus has him enter and he pays the ferryman, boards and they glide through the not-wet waters of the Styx that remain undisturbed by the boat.

Nobody is there on the other side.

Nobody awaits him.

Alone he reaches the Elysian Fields and they are cooler, sweeter, calmer than he had imagined, not at all vibrant and warm. To him they appear covered in cloth, their sounds dulled almost to deafness.

So he wanders among the souls of the dead for a while, recognizing some of them; Agamemnon, Priam, Aigisthos who had killed Agamemnon, and he sees one Trojan priest named Laokoon.

Somewhere, just outside the Elysian fields, in a corner he sometimes sees a beautiful young man in rich clothes, chin haughtily lifted, and he watches him for a while but he won‘t dare coming closer to those whose deaths can only be attributed to his lust for another man’s wife.

He recognizes the great Herakles, walking side by side with his grandfather Peleus and the old Philoctetes.

But nobody seems to see him, to care he is here.

He is forgotten, it seems.

His father won‘t come.

He finally finds him, watches him wandering, looking, sometimes stopping to talk to the others and he does not seem to mind at all that one of the people he talks to the most is the Trojan prince Hector.

Pyrrhus watches and waits for a long time until Achilles is alone before he approaches.

Achilles turns to him before he can even speak a word and looks at him, and even in this twilight of the underworld he can see divinity gleam in his hair and his eyes like gold in the sun above.

They resemble each other, yes. But to Pyrrhus he still looks like a stranger.

The golden-green eyes wander. „He should be here. Say, why can I not find him? I wanted us buried together so we may enter the Elysian Fields in the same unity we lived in. Why did we not?“

For the first time in his existence Pyrrhus can not speak right away.

„Father,“ he then says, „he won‘t come. He will be forgotten, he will go unremembered, as he deserves. His existence will no longer taint you.“

„He never tainted me.“ For a moment Achilles' eyes flare up like a pine tree in a firestorm, almost alive, but they dim just as quickly and return to a deep, eternal sadness. „He never could. If anything he kept me from tainting myself. If I am remembered at all it will be thanks to him.“

„I was the one telling your story! I was the one carrying on your legacy!“

„You changed it. You twisted it, you took it and cut it until it fit your liking without a single care for how much truth you destroyed.“ Achilles shakes his head and he looks weary, so weary and tired.

This had once been _Aristos Achaios_.

„Thanks to me you will be remembered as a hero, a legend! Your name will shine through the centuries!“

„I will be remembered as a man who demanded the sacrifice of an innocent girl thanks to you. I will be remembered as hateful and petty. ~~Thanks to you.~~ “ He shakes his head. „I will be remembered only for my hubris and how it brought doom wherever I went. He worked so hard, for me to overcome it and be remembered a better man than I was, remembered the man I could have been. You took that from us. And then you took even him from me. Even now.“

„I carried out your legacy!“ Heat is flaring up in him, now, in death, when in life he had always marvelled how he was so amazingly, astonishingly, beautifully cold, oh, he wants to burn, he wants to burn him.

Achilles cuts him off. „You never had a say in my legacy.“ It is him who is cold now, just for a moment. „My wishes were clear to those around me. They should have been clear to you as well.“

„I carried on your name! I am the reason your blood will not quit flowing through the veins of the future!“

„What is that to me? What concern do the dead have with the future of the living?“ Achilles asks, voice calm, almost flat, almost dead.

And then silence and they do nothing but stare at each other.

But finally Achilles turns. „Finally,“ he whispers and his voice almost breaks, overflowing with sadness and delight and unnumbered days of waiting, longing, yearning, missing. „He is coming.“

He reaches to some point Pyrrhus cannot see. And dissolves in a shower of sunlight from above that warms his skin and causes tears to well up in his eyes, the first tears he ever cries.

Phyrrhus remains alone. Phyrrhus remains forgotten. Pyrrhus remains nothing.

**Author's Note:**

> Currently I am reading "Circe" by the same author and am already making a list whom I'd like to see dead and if the novel doesn't take care of it...  
> Thanks for reading and as always many thanks to my beta reader thegrimshapeofyoursmile - whom I really recommend checking out btw. You know... just in case you like detailed, intelligent, emotionally raw story telling...


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